#Massachusetts

A vital mental health program in Massachusetts that supports children and teens with severe mental health issues could be shut down due to budget constraints. Governor Maura Healey’s budget proposal includes significant cuts, stirring concern among families, clinicians, and community organizations about the impact on vulnerable youth.

The Intensive Residential Treatment Program, which provides long-term care across 72 beds for young children and adolescents, aims to heal families as a unit. A mother whose child benefited from the program shared that it helped save her child’s life. Her child, now 25, faced suicidality, self-harm, and trauma before joining the program, where sustained support and family involvement helped stabilize their recovery. She noted that in-patient hospital stays offered only short-term stabilization, whereas the program’s extended care was crucial for lasting improvement.

A puzzling health pattern has prompted an in-depth review at a Boston-area hospital where five nurses from the same maternity unit floor were diagnosed with benign brain tumors. The cluster emerged among 11 employees on the hospital’s fifth floor, triggering scrutiny by hospital officials in partnership with government health and safety agencies. Early findings show no clear environmental cause within the facility.

Hospital leaders, including the Associate Chief Medical Officer, say disposable masks, the water supply, and proximity to medical technologies such as X-ray equipment and chemotherapy facilities were thoroughly evaluated and found not to pose risks. Staff and patients were assured that no environmental hazard within the hospital has been identified at this stage.

In a puzzling development, five nurses working on the same floor of a Boston-area hospital, Massachusetts General Brigham Newton-Wellesley, have been diagnosed with benign brain tumors. This worrisome cluster of health issues was identified among 11 employees from the hospital’s fifth-floor maternity unit, prompting an in-depth investigation by the hospital in collaboration with governmental health and safety bodies. Despite thorough scrutiny, the investigation has not identified any environmental factors within the hospital that could explain this phenomenon.